476 THE PRIMITIVE HOME OF THE ARYANS. 



late speech and the process whereby they had developed into the mani- 

 fold languages of the present world. But this was not enough. The 

 students of language went even further. They claimed not only the 

 domain of philology as their own, but the domain of ethnology as well. 

 Language was confounded with race, and the relationshij) of tribe with 

 tribe, of nation with nation, was determined by the languages they spoke. 

 If the origin of a people was required, the question was summarily de- 

 cided by tracing the origin of its language. English is on the whole a 

 Teutonic language, and therefore the whole English people must have 

 a Teutonic ancestry. The dark-skinned Bengali speaks languages akin 

 to our own ; therefore the blood which runs in his veins must be derived 

 from the same source as that which runs in ours. 



The dreams of universal conquest indulged in by a young science soon 

 pass away as facts accumulate, and the limit of its powers is more and 

 more strictly determined. The Urspraclie has become a language of 

 comparatively late date in the history of linguistic development, which 

 differed from Sanskrit or Greek only in the fuller inflexional character. 

 The light its analysis was believed to cast on the origin of speech has 

 proved to be the light of a willo'the-wisp, leading astray and pervert- 

 ing the energies of those who might have done more profitable work. 

 The mechanism of primitive language often lies more clearly revealed 

 in a modern Bushman's dialect or the grammar of Esquimaux than in 

 that much-vaunted Urspraclie from which such great things were once 

 expected by the philosophy of human speech. 



Ethnology has avenged the invasion of its territory by linguistic 

 science, and has in turn claimed a province which is not its own. It is 

 no longer the comparative philologist, but the ethnologist, who now and 

 again uses philological terms in an ethnological sense, or settles racial 

 affinities by an appeal to language. The philologist first talked about 

 an "Indo-European race;" such an expression could now be heard only 

 from the lips of a youthful ethnologist. 



As soon as the discovery was made that the Indo-European languages 

 were derived from a common mother, scholars began to ask where that 

 common mother-tongue was spoken. Butit was agreed on all hands that 

 this musthavebeensomewherein Asia. Theology and history alike had 

 taught that mankind came from the East and from the East accordingly 

 the f"rs2;r«c7<emusthavecometoo. Hitherto Hebrew had been generally 

 regarded as the original language of humanity f now that the Indo-Eu- 

 ropean Ursprache had deprived Hebrew of its i)lace of honor, it was 

 natural, if not inevitable, that like Hebrew, it should be accounted of 

 Asiatic origin. Moreover it was the discovery of Sanskrit that had led 

 to the discovery of the Ursprache. Had it not been for Sanskrit, with 

 its copious grammar, its early literature, and the light which it threw 

 on the forms of Greek and Latin speech, comparative philology might 

 never have been born. Sanskrit was the magician's wand which had 

 called the new science into existence, and without the help of Sanskrit 



